


And He Listened

by po3t



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Depressed John Egbert, Depression, Earth C (Homestuck), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, To An Extent, also lmao john doesnt die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:06:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29083602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/po3t/pseuds/po3t
Summary: Dave breaks a window and hurt/comforts tf out of John
Relationships: John Egbert/Dave Strider
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	And He Listened

You wish you knew where these tears were coming from.

Then again you really don’t want to dwell on it. 

The warmth of your mattress is a subtle comfort curling around you. Your sheets haphazard in all their rumpled and uncomfortable glory.

Your face adorned in ugly red splotches. 

You’d act as if you were unaware of your predicament. As if your sniffling and swollen eyes left anything to the imagination.

Your thoughts managed to wind themselves up, unlike last night. Or the night before, or before that. The nights you lie numb in your wake and fitful in your dreams. Frustration. 

You remember when you were first beginning to see them in pattern, it stopped being a pattern long ago. In its steed had risen this bitter taste intertwined with your tongue. 

Fou failed to notice when it’d begun. 

Ferhaps it was when you forced your house sparse of any other presence. Perhaps it was when the harsh rapping abuse to your door ceased. Perhaps it was when your appetite grew small. Perhaps it was when you could no longer force your hands upon your keyboard keys. Perhaps it was when you blocked all your friends’ numbers and ignored everything else. Perhaps it was you.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. 

such a dishonest word. 

\- 

Fou’d kick your feet if your muscles would contract correctly. The cool whip of still air would be refreshing to your neglected bones. everything hurts. Stiffness or cramps, you may never know. 

These days you’re missing your friends (are you even obligated to call them that?) more than usual. Your internal monologue is failing you. It’s a longer script than you remember it being yesterday. The justification you’d arrived at just a day prior deeming itself unworthy. 

You’d message them if you could. 

But you can’t.

You know you can’t.

-

You know this is wrong. Fundamentally, morally, fucking with your humanity. But as you peer through the narrow orange-tinted bottle through the slits of your eyes, obstructed by thick lenses, you gaze upon the tiny buds. They’re speechlessly and shamelessly beckoning to you with their gospel.

You just can’t bring yourself to refuse their kind words. 

In retrospect, downing an entire bottle of pills isn’t the most pleasant method of fucking killing yourself. 

Especially when it doesn’t fucking work.

-

When you’re eyes peeled themselves open on their own accord you found yourself wishing there was a way to kill your head. Perhaps being a less than sentient sack of organs would suit your needs much better. Your fingers would curl themselves into fists and you would steel yourself with the sharp pinch your fingernails rewarded. 

God were those lights bright. You blinked and your mouth stretched itself into an invisible frown. The haze obstructing your vision ceased at what appeared to be a snails pace. Through the insistence of your pupils, the outline of the stark white walls of your bathroom seeped into your field of vision. 

Your head was throbbing and your hands seemed to jerk at every harsh beat your heart supplied. 

You couldn’t bring yourself to be surprised at the lack of sterile surfaces and the clutch of death. 

-

You think you’ve run out of room on your arm. You’re more annoyed than you would like to give yourself credit for. You wish it wasn’t so unsatisfying to drag a blade anywhere else other than your forearms. 

Cuts. 

Scars, fresh, sparse, cluttered, angry and thin. There was no end to them. A crowd of people in line for a ferris wheel. Their voices are always the loudest. the largest ones tended to itch. 

-

There’s someone at your door. 

You’re honestly quite confused, you had irrevocably forced everyone out of your life. So who the fuck is bothering you right now? 

Your attempts to ignore it go unheard. The knocking only getting louder as time passes. As if whoever was there had spontaneously grown extra limbs, and instead of freaking out, decided to piss you off. 

You have to steel yourself before chancing a glance out the window. You look more presentable than usual today, courtesy of the shower you’d taken. Neglecting to do anything other than shampoo your hair. Not like that’s something you’d care to admit. So embarrassment isn’t an issue. It’s more an issue of ‘fuck you, go away, don’t even look at me’. 

When you finally pull the curtains open a smidge more than your comfortable with and peer outside you’re met with candy red so saturated it causes your pupils to dilate. Dave then. Definitely Dave. You can’t do this. there’s no way in hell you can open the door. that’s just not something that happens. 

So you don’t. 

Instead the knocking drills on, you reckon he’d been training for this day, the day he finally spends hours upon hours of his day knocking on the door of john egbert. Although, you doubt he cares enough to stay that long. Your movements are drilled into you, magnetic in the way your bed lures you into his warmth. 

Curling up into a ball and pulling the comforter clear up over your ears, you ignore it. In fact, you ignore it so well you’re almost certain you nod off at some point. 

-

When you wake theres a voice unlike your own. That’s odd in and of itself, but what even more weird is the steady weight curled into the base of your hairline, cradling the back of your head. 

“I’m gonna be honest man, this is really fuckin weird.”

The silence stretches on, the voice presumably awaiting a response.

“Yeah...” A soft self-deprecating sigh. “I just- we knew he wasn’t doing very fuckin hot, so I don’t know why i’m so goddamn surprised.” 

A muffled exclamation.

“I don’t fucking know, maybe he- What no?” 

The conversation drills on for much longer than your attention span is willing to work for. Your body sluggishly lifts it’s arms and pushes your torso away from the mattress. You realize very quickly that your glasses are still perched on your nose, exactly where you left them. 

The voice you’d previously been filtering in one ear and out the ear had suddenly ceased with your movement. You bring your hand up to massage your temple, lifting your glasses in the process. The hand at the base of your hairline gently massaged as well, easing you into a calmer state than before. 

“... John?” The hand owner spoke. 

Your eyes are hesitant to meet the others, but when they do you can’t really say you’re surprised. Dave. Who else would it have been? Speaking of, how the hell did he even get in? 

You softly croak out your question, voice laced with exhaustion. 

Dave’s head briefly tilts towards the right, your attention immediately flicking in that very same direction. 

Oh. 

Your window is shattered. 

“... What.” You sputter out, baffled. Your tone a bit harsher than you’d intended.

He mutters a “You weren’t answering.” before tucking his arms behind his head and reclining against gravity. 

You only offer a wishful sigh in response. 

\- 

After you discovered the loss of your window dave had lead you downstairs for a snack to ‘Hold you over until the takeout got here’. You didn’t even ask to ask to know he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

“Y’know,” he says between a mouthful of cracker, “Everyone’s really fuckin worried about you.” 

You immediately school the eyebrow that itched to stand. “Yeah sorry man, I don’t know, at some point I uh-“ You pause to scratch the back of your neck and avert your gaze. “Just felt like it’d be better to not message, y’know?” 

By the unwavering silence he responds with you’re pretty sure he doesn’t know. 

Your head gently lays itself on the counter in front of you as your arms rest on the surface between the granite and your forehead. You mumble out an apology. You’re just making excuses and both of you are aware of it. 

A hand settles between your shoulder blades. and if you lean into it, nobody has to know.

\- 

You and dave finally had the talk a few hours later. after some takeout, and way too much Nicolas Cage for Dave’s liking. The television had turned to a muted static in your peripheral. Your hands weren’t shaking but they felt like puddy. 

You’d told him everything. 

Laying in your bed for hours upon hours on end, the only entertainment being your dreams whenever you dozed off. Downing a bottle of white-yellowish capsules, waking in a halo of harsh bright lights you’d figured you would never see again. The bright red army laying in formation on your forearm, all drafted by you and only you. Even the things you weren’t ready to admit to yourself, you told him. 

And he listened.

Throughout the entire exchange dave didn’t utter a word, just offered comfort through the soothing gestures of his hand. When you’d choke on your sentences he’d been patient with you. Even more so than you could manage with yourself. And when he finally did speak up, it was soothing in all it’s cliche. 

“John, you’re going to get through this.”

He wraps his arms around your torso and pulls you close, leaving you free to hide your neck in the crook of his neck.

You couldn’t bring yourself to credit him dishonest.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like my writing has gotten boring :/


End file.
